Heroic Lei Shen guide?

Ok, our 25-man guild is currently working on Heroic Dark Animus and should have him either this week or next (hoping this week). Thus I'm trying to get some info on Heroic Lei Shen. However unlike others from the second half of ToT there really isn't much info on how to properly do this fight on Heroic. There is nothing on Manaflask and the only real guide I found talks about what dps shamans need to do and that they are using a Ball corner kill first strat. So can anyone point to anything that might help our guild out with this fight?

Ok, our 25-man guild is currently working on Heroic Dark Animus and should have him either this week or next (hoping this week). Thus I'm trying to get some info on Heroic Lei Shen. However unlike others from the second half of ToT there really isn't much info on how to properly do this fight on Heroic. There is nothing on Manaflask and the only real guide I found talks about what dps shamans need to do and that they are using a Ball corner kill first strat. So can anyone point to anything that might help our guild out with this fight?

Heroic changes:

1.) Instead of Lei Shen destroying the highest energy conduit after you finish a transition, it instead becomes active for the rest of the fight at level 1 power. Solution: overcharge the abilities that cause the least amount of ruckus - bouncing bolt and static shock.
2.) During transitions, right as bouncing bolts go out, Lei Shen targets 3 people with helm of command which pushes them off the platform at roughly ~180% movement speed for 8 seconds. Solution: sprint, blink, and their various cousins throughout the classes.
3.) Ball lightnings aoe upon movement now (maybe they always have, but it's actually meaningful here). Solution: perfect the 8-10 range circle setup -> mass grip in -> stun -> nuke -> followup stun sequence. You'll have to do this 11-12 times in your first kill, make sure you've practiced this maneuver enough to make it seamless.

Phase 1 dps check: get Lei Shen to 65.5% with no pillar going above 100 energy. Pick your favorite platform to start with, but bouncing bolts needs to be the highest energy. Use pre-planned positioning + life grips at certain energy amounts to ensure transitions at the correct energy. Monk provoke is also helpful on movements.

1st transition: make 3 groups of ~5 players for three of the quadrants. These people need to be capable of surviving a static shock by themselves. Basically, every class but priests/shaman/dks. Put all of those classes into the last quadrant, use AMZ every time static shock comes out. Have a warlock portal in that platform and maybe a few others for the hell of it. Execute transition just like you would in normal mode.

Phase 2: more lenient dps check. Ball lightning strat = have 8-10 ranged pre plan their positioning based on where Lei Shen stands. These guys need to be able to form a crude 30 yard-diameter oct-decagon/semicircle at a moment's notice. Start in static shock quadrant, and form that circle whenever ball lightning comes out. Gorefiend's grasp, leg sweep and aoe ball lightnings. Move to diffuse lightning on the second fusion slash (delay by ~3 seconds). Same deal at DL quadrant, make sure to stay spread out even as bouncing bolts are going out until the diffuse lightning hits, then soak bolts. Move to overcharge quadrant on second fusion slash.

2nd transition: tanks, monk healer, rogue in one quadrant. Four capable immunity classes in a second quadrant - these guys might get a diffuse lightning so make sure there's a druid here to chain root the add. Everyone else in the last quadrant, group up to soak static shocks, spread out to prevent multiple diffuse lightning spawns, void tendril the lighting adds to prevent them from breaking the AMZ before static shock goes out and range nuke them before the root wears off.

Phase 3: Lei shen abilities always line up this way (time are estimates):

T = 0: whip (make sure everyone's standing on one side of the boss that no one needs to stand in later)
T = 4-5: winds starts casting (use stampeding roar here, make sure all ranged run to max distance)
T = 10: thunderstruck starts casting, winds end (range take warlock portals/blink/teleport back to pre-assigned spots.)
T = 15: ball lightnings spawn in a nice circle around the people in a circle. (gorefiend's grasp them in, aoe stun -> nuke them down.)
T = 30: whip ^ repeat step 1.

During this phase, you'll have to deal with bouncing bolts and static shock. You generally want your melee + offtank to try to soak as many bouncing bolts as you can while range deal with the thunderstruck movements, while the 2nd and 4th? static shock aligns with the raid grouped up -> can soak as a group. The first and 3rd set of static shocks, well, hope they get thrown on people who can immune them. If not, rez if able.

You'll probably be able to survive up until the 7th winds or so at which point it's just too much damage to heal through. No real dps check but obviously soft enrage so the more the better. There will be some unavoidable deaths where 1-immunity classes get static shock twice in a row. Just use a battle rez on them. Make sure to save at least one rez for a dk in p3, you can do every mechanic (including tanking) understaffed, but without two dks you will assuredly wipe even if the ball lightnings spawn at 5%.

It's not a whole lot different on heroic TBH. We are only a 10 man guild and after 2 nights of attempts we have gotten the boss sub 5% a couple times.

Phase one is the same as before except a soft enrage of finishing the phase before any conduit levels up. Thunderstuck also does a considerable amount more damage than on normal, so bad positioning will cause deaths.

Helm of command happens during intermissions which channels moderately high damage to people for 8 seconds and pushes them fairly fast. It can target anybody and it can kill you by damage or by pushing you off the platform to your death. Setup your quadrants with gateways and have necessary talents for movement speed otherwise.

Disabling a conduit doesn't really disable it. Disabling static shock means that he will still use it in the second intermission as well as P2 and P3. I'm not sure what 25 mans do but most 10 mans disable static shock and then diffusion chain. Might be different in 25 so I don't know. Although it might seem like a lot, dealing with static shock in P2 is really really simple considering you typically have a group stacked at range and melee. P2 is roughly the same aside from the conduit in P1 you disabled being present through it.

Again I'm not sure what 25 mans do for 'disabling' conduits but I think the premise is you always want to disable two that are side by side so that you have more room in P3.

P2 intermission is just like the first one except more damage. You have to deal with all four abilities unlike normal and of course helm of command. It's an easier intermission though because just like normal you have your raid split into three quadrants instead of four, making everything much easier IMO.

P3 didn't seem too bad for us. You have to deal with both disabled conduits in abilities in P3 in addition to his normal abilities. Basically set up lock portals and when he pushes you with wind have your range head towards that side of the room. When thunderstuck goes out take the portal back. This baits the AoE away from melee/tanks and because of the lock portals all of your raid will be a long ways away. A badly placed thunderstruck will probably result in death because he soon after summons ball lightning.

I said a lot but it's honestly not too bad. It was a lot harder when peoples gear was lower because you had to squeak out a lot of DPS from various places. It's basically being super efficient at normal mode.

The second biggest difference between 25s & 10s (I might be biased, but I raid heroic modes on both) are spatial mechanics and how they handle them differently. The biggest difference of course is that 10s has significantly more lenient dps checks but that's an argument for another thread. Ball lightning, for example - you simply cannot execute this mechanic in 25m without near-perfect positioning, a gorefiend's grasp, then chain stuns; it's literally impossible. In 10m you can afford to let them jump around a bit, in 25 the (majority) must die before the very first jump or else the raid wipes, and that is the most important change from normal -> heroic for 25m.

Diffuse lightning is another one of those things. We don't have the luxury of overloading it in 25s because the headache of making sure the raid is perfectly spread + the significant amount of aoe that even one diffusion add does is more troublesome than just soaking bouncing bolts.

The second biggest difference between 25s & 10s (I might be biased, but I raid heroic modes on both) are spatial mechanics and how they handle them differently. The biggest difference of course is that 10s has significantly more lenient dps checks but that's an argument for another thread. Ball lightning, for example - you simply cannot execute this mechanic in 25m without near-perfect positioning, a gorefiend's grasp, then chain stuns; it's literally impossible. In 10m you can afford to let them jump around a bit, in 25 the (majority) must die before the very first jump or else the raid wipes, and that is the most important change from normal -> heroic for 25m.

Diffuse lightning is another one of those things. We don't have the luxury of overloading it in 25s because the headache of making sure the raid is perfectly spread + the significant amount of aoe that even one diffusion add does is more troublesome than just soaking bouncing bolts.

I haven't done lei shen on hc (never will probably ;P), but as far as I know 10 mans make sure to be spread around the boss in kind of a circle and be moving when ball lightnings jump (and don't be moving to a spot where it might jump to). Some people would call the 25 man version of only two people having an important job with dealing with ball lightnings to be pretty much ignoring the mechanic. Also knowing for sure that you have multiple warlocks in a 25 (to "ignore" helm and thunderstrucks whatever) might make that one part easier than on 10 man.

Again I know not about the balance on that fight, I am just saying that there are different challenges for each raid size. Being able to bring more people with immunities or stuff like AMZ must be helpfull for static shocks. Then again.. on 10 man you could probably soak a static show with just personal cooldowns. Different difficulties that cannot really be compared.

Diffuse lightning is another one of those things. We don't have the luxury of overloading it in 25s because the headache of making sure the raid is perfectly spread + the significant amount of aoe that even one diffusion add does is more troublesome than just soaking bouncing bolts.

We overload diffuse lightning on 25. Mass spell reflect completely negates this mechanic, and the reflected add damages Lei Shen and can be taunted. Shamans with glyphed grounding totem can be back up as well, but only for their party. If your warriors (at least 2 dps warriors) are competent, this mechanic is far, far easier to deal with (imo) than bouncing bolts. The flip side is that if they mess up the timing even by a second, it's pretty much a guaranteed wipe. And a very fast one at that. They will need to leap out at times to be with the range since the range on mass spell reflect is only 20 yards though. Static shock is also very easy to deal with using this strat, we never once sacrificed anyone in p3.

One key thing that I didn't see mentioned is baiting lightning whip. This is important in p2 when you don't want a lightning whip to be happening where you're about to run, but it's especially important in p3. You don't want all your range running over the lightning trying to go out to bait thunderstruck. It's targeted on a player, just stand away from the direction you're about to run.

Again I know not about the balance on that fight, I am just saying that there are different challenges for each raid size. Being able to bring more people with immunities or stuff like AMZ must be helpfull for static shocks. Then again.. on 10 man you could probably soak a static show with just personal cooldowns. Different difficulties that cannot really be compared.

Agreed, different difficulties have different challenges. Which is why I was somewhat confused when Tojara posted his 10m experiences in a 25m thread with what his raid found was easier, and I attempted to correct any misconceptions. You are somewhat mistaken about the difficulty of ball lightning though. I challenge you to ask your raid to stand in a straight line, distributed more or less evenly between two points. You'd be surprised at how long it'd take everyone to sort themselves out. The difficulty in 25m ball lightning is having the 8-10 designated range get into position, at least 8 yards apart from each other and between 12 to 15 yards from the boss at the drop of a hat after executing other mechanics such as all standing outside waiting for diffuse lightning or soaking bouncing bolts. The actual grip/stun is trivial.

I'm not sure whether you move around in 10m or not but I'd assume that it's not worth it since there's only 3 ball lightnings so the max hit is ~300k on a single dude and you'd just mannorth's fat radius aoe/multidot down the three balls.

Mass spell reflect completely negates this mechanic

Ah, I never knew about the mass spell reflect trick ... learn something new every day. As it is, I don't think we have 2 dps warriors in either of our setups to try it out, alas.

I did mention lightning whip though, but perhaps I should've phrased it better: "make sure everyone's standing on one side of the boss that no one needs to stand in later". I wrote it that way because there's a variety of positioning strategies and locations that you can use in p3, and I wanted a statement that was more or less universal.

So, wait, how does Spell Reflect (and grounding) actually work here? The add spawns without fixate and the initial damage is reflected? Or something else? Never really thought about, either on normal on heroic.

It doesn't solve the annoying "need 2+ DKs" issue, but it might help a bit.

I did mention lightning whip though, but perhaps I should've phrased it better: "make sure everyone's standing on one side of the boss that no one needs to stand in later".

Ah yeah sorry about that, I just quickly glanced at your post and must have missed it.

Originally Posted by KaPe

So, wait, how does Spell Reflect (and grounding) actually work here? The add spawns without fixate and the initial damage is reflected? Or something else? Never really thought about, either on normal on heroic.

It doesn't solve the annoying "need 2+ DKs" issue, but it might help a bit.

Yes, the add spawns and doesn't fixate, and the add damages the boss. If it damages the raid as well it isn't very significant, it never bothered us. You can't reflect during transitions though, so it still needs to be bursted down there and people need to spread out. During transitions void tendrils is extremely useful to root the add, then you can move away from it and it won't chain.

So just to confirm you can pop Mass Spell Reflect on a stacked up raid during a non intermission phase, Diffusion Chain goes out in the middle of your giant ass pile, it will only spawn one add?

Is the spawned mob friendly?

edit: we just pulled it and it only spawns 1 hostile add in a stacked up raid.

edit2: how do you deal with a leveled up bouncing bolt in 2nd intermssion? We usually disable it first.

So the mass spellreflect works wonders, but I got a few follow up questions to add to the above.

Disabling Static shock as the first pylon in P1, kinda forces you to go on Diffusion pylon at start P2, which is all good.
Can you at all level Overcharged pylon in P2, and survive it in Intermission 2 in order to avoid leveling Bouncing Bolts?

Does Overcharged hit 4 people in 25 man if its level 3 at Intermission 2?
If you cant do this, is a level 3 bouncing bolt manageable in Intermission 2?

So the mass spellreflect works wonders, but I got a few follow up questions to add to the above.

Disabling Static shock as the first pylon in P1, kinda forces you to go on Diffusion pylon at start P2, which is all good.
Can you at all level Overcharged pylon in P2, and survive it in Intermission 2 in order to avoid leveling Bouncing Bolts?

Does Overcharged hit 4 people in 25 man if its level 3 at Intermission 2?
If you cant do this, is a level 3 bouncing bolt manageable in Intermission 2?

Haven't killed yet, but working on it.

If you plan to disable bouncing at all, I'd recommend doing it as the first. Seems much easier that way imo.

And leveling up any is a pretty big no-no. Any of them leveled up makes it really annoying to deal with. Livable? Yeah, but not always livable. It can easily be a 100% wipe if the positioning is bad of the overload.

- Disable static shock first.
- Start P2 on Diffusion (level that almost twice as the next disabled)
- From here we cant level Overcharged (cause theres too much RNG in 4 overcharged targets?)
- We can level bouncing bolts ?? How many bolts does bouncing bolt level 3 create in intermissions??

We do it like this:

- Disable Bouncing bolts first.
- Start p2 in static shock, take it to 2nd Fusion Slash, maybe 2-3 seconds after that and move him.
- In diffusion we stay until the fusion slash at 160 energy or so (right after the whip).
- Go to overcharge and depending on dps push with first ball lightnings or wait until after the bolt/overcharge combo has gone out to push. if you wait, use a raid CD or have people use a personal if theyre getting hit by bolt + overcharge.